All posts tagged Baosteel

Baosteel Group Corp.’s Shaoguan steel plant, about 210 kilometers north of Guangzhou, in a rural part of Guangdong province, has turned into a steel city since opening in 1966. The facility has apartments, schools, hospitals, open-air markets and automobile garages. That’s mostly been a blessing for the workers there, who get cheap housing, pensions and lots of services. About 50,000 people live in the area. But now Shaoguan is threatened.

China’s economy is slowing sharply and the country’s leadership is looking for measures to make sure the decline doesn’t get out of hand. Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday said that China would boost investment, a signal that new approvals could be in store for big infrastrucure, energy and construction projects. The problem: China suffers from overcapacity in lots of areas. Read More »

Brawn, not brain-power, characterizes the Chinese business groups that a new report says will shake up the corporate world order.

A list of rising companies from the developing world likeliest to challenge the multinationals (pdf), published by the Boston Consulting Group on Tuesday, suggests size and government backing in China, not entrepreneurialism, may be the source of the global impact by the country’s businesses. China occupies 33 spots on the 100-strong list, against 20 from India and 13 from Brazil. Read More »

Steel is a bellwether for the country’s commodities markets, in turn a proxy for its economic sentiment. So when steel prices are down, as they have been for about two months, the theory goes that this must mean trouble is afoot.

Expert Insight

New rules on labor negotiations in southern China offer a potential solution to the country's growing problem with labor unrest while at the same time illustrating the difficulty the Communist Party faces in effectively addressing workers’ grievances.

For much of the last half-century, changing China through economic reform seemed to make far better sense than transforming the country through political revolution. Xi Jinping is trying to flip that on its head.

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